New Technology Opens Horizons at a Lesser Cost

By Felicia Craddock

May 15, 2013

PARIS — A collection of intricate, geometric necklaces and bracelets made from waves of sinuous silver strands: There is something unusual about Jacqueline Leib’s pieces that those familiar with an emerging form of technology might recognize.

Each item has been created not by any traditional method, but through the fast-growing medium of 3-D printing, a recent addition to the designer’s lexicon that is giving a new generation of jewelry makers the opportunity to turn their ideas into reality.

Now an up-and-coming jewelry designer, Ms. Leib originally studied graphic design at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, a path that led her to a career designing television and movie sets.

Throughout this period she amassed drawings to fill numerous notebooks but had no viable means to realize her many complex designs drawn in pencil.

That changed when she stumbled upon 3-D printing two years ago, through a friend who worked in aerospace engineering, Ms. Leib recalled during a recent interview.

“They used 3-D printing to make really precise, miniature pieces,” she said. “So I wondered if I could do it with jewelry.”

Though her background in graphic design gave her a head start, Ms. Leib said that familiarizing herself with 3-D printing software was a challenge. It took her between 20 and 30 print runs before she felt she understood the process fully.

But the many puzzling hours in front of her computer proved well spent. “It’s an amazing technology because it opens so many doors to get out of your classic kind of jewelry designing,” she said.

“You can have a level of detail that’s getting smaller and smaller every year, and you can do stuff that you can’t do by hand that’s incredible,” she added. “You can just have so much fun, the flexibility of the technology is amazing.”

Armed with the ability to create complex forms that she would not have been able to achieve through more traditional methods, Ms. Leib said she was now able to make concrete the natural and architectural rhythms, and the organic flowing forms like water and topography, that are her inspiration.

“I think that there’s always something beautiful in rhythms or repetition that your eyes can understand and predict,” she said. “It’s like 3-D graphics almost, that you can put on the body.”

Although the resulting pieces often appear to be complex, Ms. Leib said, the process of their creation did not need to be time-consuming.

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A silver collar designed by Jacqueline Leib.CreditJacqueline Leib

She said she could transfer the simplest of her hand-drawn designs to a computer in as little as 15 minutes, and turn an idea into a physical piece within two weeks.

As she has become faster and more confident with the technology, so too has she been able to experiment with the widening range of materials that are becoming available.

She initially worked with resin, a light-weight, pliant material that she has used to create a series of delicate, black accessories that sit like tattoos on the skin. The increased availability of precious metals for 3-D printing meant that she could print in silver, a development that encouraged her to experiment with stones, pearls and gems, including Madagascar sapphire.

Because of its costs, the 3-D technology is one that few young designers can fully explore without financial backing, Ms. Leib said. Yet without 3-D printing, producing designs like hers in silver would require the use of a foundry, a workshop where liquefied metal is pored into molds.

She said she would need to produce a minimum of 3,000 pieces at a cost of around €10,000, or $13,000, a hefty sum for most designers who are not already established.

Ms. Leib’s story is a familiar one to Peter Weijmarshausen, the chief executive of Shapeways, a 3-D printing company in New York that helps designers turn intangible ideas into sellable jewelry by giving them a means to create their pieces, and a marketing platform where the works can be advertised and sold.

The traditional method of manufacturing and selling a product is a “big, big barrier if you are a starting designer, because cash is a problem,” Mr. Weijmarshausen said recently by telephone.

“With Shapeways, what you do is you design the jewelry and you put it in your shop,” he said. “There is no upfront cost, the shop is for free, we tell you what it costs to manufacture and you mark it up, and all of a sudden you’re in business and you can start selling.”

His company provides a platform for professionals to realize their designs in materials ranging from plastic to jewelry-grade silver, and Mr. Weijmarshausen hopes soon to add gold. The rapidly expanding site also contains a number of features aimed at involving visitors in the design process.

Those features include the personalization of orders and, for anyone willing to brave the software, the ability to design and print whatever they like from scratch.

“I have heard amazing stories where people have designed their own engagement ring on Shapeways,” Mr. Weijmarshausen said. “They felt really empowered because they could make something that shows they really cared about the other one, because it’s custom, it’s not something bought from a shop.”

The only barrier was the software, he said, but with high schools in the United States now teaching 3-D software design, “more and more people are starting to learn.”

These developments, combined with ever simpler designing capabilities, mean that an art that was once the preserve of skilled artisans trained in traditional handcrafting techniques is becoming progressively more accessible to the masses.

“It’s a design system that’s very democratized,” Ms. Leib said. “I’d say in five or six years, when all the designing software is simple enough, anyone will be able to make their own jewelry.”